Discussions about eggcorns and related topics
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Chris -- 2011-03-08
My student writes, ”...[H]e could not file any lawsuits because the web site was not hailed responsible.”
It’s possible her Southern accent gave her “hailed” for “held” ( like the “For Sell” signs you see around here), but it’s also possible that the sense of being called to or commanded ( as in “hail a cab”) is at work here. Is it an eggcorn? Hail, yes!
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Works for me.
*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .
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her Southern accent gave her “hailed” for “held”
Yes, I used to hear southern preachers on the radio warning that sinners were in danger of “going to hail.” I wondered if they had read Dante’s Inferno-his hell was cold, with a frozen lake at the center. (The Latin source of “inferno,” infernus, is based on infer, a word for “below,” with no temperature implied. Hell has been described at both extremes of the thermometer, though the high temp version seems to have been more popular, over the centuries, than the low temp one. About the only thing we know for sure is that the place is not look warm.)
A few minutes later. I just had a thought. Do you suppose that “cold as hail” could be an eggcorn in the U. S. South? There are at least four examples on the web of “cold as hail outside” and another half dozen under “as cold as hail.”
Last edited by kem (2010-04-08 23:19:55)
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I see that “death nail” has been chronicled already but another along the the same lines is “tears wailing up”.
You’ve got a name for everything; have you got one for these Southland-sounding eggcorns? Aigcorns?
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